This invention relates to shock isolators and, more specifically, to modular shock isolators and a method of shock isolation of components of a system with multiple modular shock isolators.
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Various elastomeric materials have been used, or suggested for use, to provide shock and/or vibration damping as stated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,720, which issued on Jun. 16, 1998 to Yamagisht, et al. These materials include natural rubbers and synthetic resins such as polyvinyl chlorides, polyurethane, polyamides polystyrenes, copolymerized polyvinyl chlorides, and poloyolefine synthetic rubbers as well as synthetic materials such as urethane, EPDM, styrene-butadiene rubbers, nitrites, isoprene, chloroprenes, propylene, and silicones. The particular type of elastomeric material is not critical but urethane material sold under the trademark Sorbothane(copyright) is currently employed. Suitable material is also sold by Aero E.A.R. Specialty Composites, as Isoloss VL. The registrant of the mark Sorbothane(copyright) for urethane material is the Hamilton Kent Manufacturing Company (Registration No. 1,208,333), Kent, Ohio 44240.
The elastomeric elements employed in the prior art were commonly formed into typical geometric 3D shapes, such as spheres, squares, right circular cylinders, cones, rectangles and the like as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,776,720. These typical geometric shapes, do not minimize or eliminate shock and vibration to the degree accomplished by the elastomeric shock isolators of the present invention.
One of the difficulties of providing shock isolation to components of a system is that because of the different types and sizes of equipment in a system one requires shock isolators or shock mounts of different size, of different damping characteristics as well as different load bearing characteristics. In order to properly isolate all the equipment in the system each of the shock isolators are designed and then manufactured so as to have the proper shock and damping characteristics to protect an individual system component. Thus, isolating a single system from shock and vibration can require multiple different shock isolators or shock mounts. In contrast, the present invention comprises a method of shock isolation of the various components of a system using multiple identical modular shock isolators.
In order to obtain the proper shock and damping characteristics for the shock mounts of each of the components of the system more or less of the modular shock isolators are ganged or tiled together to provide a shock mount with the proper shock and vibration characteristics. That is, instead of manufacturing an individual shock isolator for each component of the system one can manufacture a modular shock isolator and then through a process of in situ assembly of multiple modular shock isolators one can create a shock mount of desired shock and vibration characteristics.
The present method allows for mass production of a high damp elastomer modular shock isolator while at the same time allowing one to use the modular shock isolators to create shock mounts for different components since the number of modular shock isolators used can be selected to obtain the proper damping characteristics. For example, in one application two modular shock isolators can be stacked on one another to obtain the proper damping characteristics and in another application three modular shock isolators can be arranged in side by side or end-to-end relationship to obtain the necessary damping characteristics. Thus, instead of requiring multiple shock isolators a user can consult a precalculated chart showing the damping and shock isolation characteristics of various ganged modular shock isolators to select the modular arrangement to incorporate into the system to provide the proper shock mounts for each of the components of the system.
Another of the difficulties of utilizing damping materials is that the fluidic nature of damping materials make it difficult to use the damping materials in applications that require structural integrity. In the present invention the fluidic type damping materials are incorporated between layers of elastomers in the modular isolator with the damping material selectively secured to the elastomer materials of the modular isolator to thereby provide a modular shock isolator with the necessary damping characteristics and the necessary shock and isolation characteristics.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,059,254 shows are energy absorbing unit comprising an elastomeric member arranged in a trapezoidal configuration. A sliding piston is incorporated in the unit which has limited displacement due to a pin that slides within an elongated slot.
Briefly, the invention comprises a modular shock isolator and method of isolation of components of a system with multiple modular shock isolators. In one mode, a modular shock isolator having a base with legs extending from each side of the base with each of the legs having a foot that extends outward from the legs can be individually mounted to support plates or a plurality of modular shock isolators can be ganged, or stacked together to change the shock isolation characteristics of the shock mount formed from the multiple modular shock isolators. A layer of damping material can be sandwiched between layers of elastomers to dampen the natural spring-back of the materials.